the Analysis of Two Paintings of Tahmasebi Shahnameh by Sultan MohammadApplying the Social Semiotics

The paintings of Sultan Mohammad, a prominent master of the second Tabriz School, are all visually spectacular and praiseworthy. Many studies have examined these paintings in terms of form and execution techniques, from aesthetic perspectives or focusing on mystical aspects, but less about the worldview and depth of Sultan Mohammad's cultural and social point of view. This study tries to interpret the semantic meanings by selecting two works by Sultan Mohammad that also contain illustrations of the demons. The present study has applied the approach of social semiotics to read the social aspects of visual cues. A model based on which composition, color and line, movements, volumes, and icons are used to interpret semantic meanings, as well as social situations and historical conditions outside the text that has been considered. The findings of the research indicate that Sultan Mohammad Tabrizi in his illustrations of two stories in the mythological section of Shahnameh in which demons also has a strong presence has shown the independence of his opinion and through the rejection of suppression the otherness his works have become a sub-narrative; in contrast to the main discourse of cultural unification in that era.